Diane Duane - On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service

Iaehh stroked her, and Rhiow could hear and feel his pain, a little blunted from that first terrible night, but no less easy to bear. She knew the way it came to him in sudden stabs, without warning, at the sound of a telephone ringing or a ra’hio commercial that had always made Hhuha laugh. “I worry that you’re lonely,” Iaehh said slowly. “I worry that I don’t take care of you right. I worry …”

“Don’t worry,” she said, snuggling a little closer to him.

“And this place is expensive,” he said. “Too big for one, really. I think I ought to move … but finding another building that allows pets is going to be such a hassle. I wonder if I shouldn’t find you somewhere else to live …”

Rhiow’s heart leaped in instant reaction: fear. He’s going to try to rehome me, she thought. Someone would adopt her who she hated, and she wouldn’t be able to get out and go about her business. Or—there were ehhif who, meaning nothing but the best, would not give away a pet if they could no longer keep it. They would take their cat to the vet and have it—

Ridiculous, another part of her mind snapped. You’re a wizard. If he seriously starts thinking about giving you away, then one day you can just vanish.

Yes, said another part of her mind: and to where? To live with whom? Wizard Rhiow might be, but she was also a Person … and the one thing People hate above all is to have their routine disrupted. To lose the comfortable den, the sympathetic tone-of-mind of Iaehh, the food at regular intervals, and find herself … where? Living in a dumpster, like Urruah? Rhiow shuddered. “Iaehh,” she said, “this is a bad idea, I’d really you rather didn’t follow this line of thought any further …”

But what about him? said still another part of her mind, and Rhiow much disliked its tone, for it was like the voice which often spoke of wizardry and its responsibilities. What about his needs? How much pain do you cause him by being here, reminding him of Hhuha every time he sees you?

And what about my needs? Rhiow retorted, fluffing up slightly. Don’t you think I miss her? Damn it, what about my pain? Haven’t I done enough in service to the Queen and the worlds to be allowed a little comfort, to think of myself first, just this once?

No reply came. Rhiow disliked the silence as much as she had the voice when it spoke. It sounded entirely too much like the Whisperer, like Hrau’f the Silent, that daughter of Iau’s who imparted knowledge of wizardry and the worlds to feline wizards … and who often seemed to have left a kind of goddaughter to Herself inside you, stern as a goddess, inflexible as one, asking the questions you would rather not answer.

What then? Rhiow said silently. Do I have to let him do this? Do I have to let him get rid of me?

Silence: and Iaehh’s stroking, all wound up with his pain and the way he missed Hhuha. Rhiow licked her nose in fear. She could practically feel his anguish through her fur.

The Oath was clear enough on the matter, the Oath which every wizard of whatever species took in one form or another. I will guard growth and ease pain … And you kept the Oath, or soon enough you began to slip away from the practice of your wizardry into something which did not bear consideration: into the service of the Lone Power, Who had invented death and pain. Entropy was running, the energy bleeding slowly away out of the universe: the Lone One would widen the wound, hurry the bleeding in any way It could. Tricking or manipulating wizards so that they used their power to Its ends was one of the Lone One’s preferred techniques.

I will not be Its claw, to rip the wound wider, Rhiow thought. Brave words, the right words for a wizard. But it was inside her that she felt the claw, already beginning to set in deep. She looked away from Iaehh.

If this situation doesn’t improve…

…then leaving may be something I have to consider.

“No,” Iaehh said, “of course not, stupid idea, it’s a stupid idea …” He stroked her. “If I have to move, it’ll be to somewhere with pets, of course it will. Sue would be furious if I ever let anything happen to you—”

He put her aside suddenly, got up. Rhiow, climbing up to stand on the arm of the chair where he had set her down, looked after Iaehh, not at all reassured.

If he keeps hurting this way—then you may have to let him think that something has “happened to you’. Regardless of how well you like this warm, snug place.

“Look at that, it’s half an hour past your dinnertime,” Iaehh said, fumbling at the kitchen cabinet where the cat food was, as if he was having trouble seeing it: and he sounded stuffed up. “Come on, let’s get you fed. Oh, jeez, look at this bowl, I keep forgetting to wash it, no wonder you didn’t want to eat out of it—”

Rhiow jumped down from the chair and went to him. If this doesn’t get better…

Sweet Queen about us, what will become of me … ?

She was out early the next morning, as (to her relief) Iaehh was: on mornings when the weather was fair, he did his jogging around dawn, to take advantage of the City’s quietest time. Rhiow had already been awake for a couple of hours and was doing her morning’s washing in the reading chair when he bent over her and scratched her head.

“See you later, plumptious—”

She gave him a rub and a purr, then went back to her washing as he went out, shut the door behind him and locked all the locks. Iaehh was pleased with those locks—their apartment had never been broken into, even though others in the building had. Rhiow smiled to herself as she finished scrubbing behind her ears, for she had heard attempts being made on all those locks at one time or another during the day when she happened to be home. Some of those attempts would have succeeded, had there not been a wizard on the other side of the door, keeping an eye on the low-maintenance spell which made access to the apartment impossible. Should anyone try to get in, the wizardry simply convinced the wall and the door that they were one unit for the duration: and various frustrated thieves had occasionally left strangely ineffectual sledgehammer marks on the outside, the whole door structure having possessed, for the duration of the attack, a non-gravitic density similar to that of lead. Rhiow was pleased with that particular piece of spelling: it required only a recharge once a week, and kept her ehhif’s routine, and hers, from being upset.

Rhiow finished washing, stretched fore and aft, and headed out the cat-door to the hiouh-box on the terrace. There she went briefly unfocused in the cool darkness as she did her business, thinking about other things. She had reviewed the basic structures and relationships of the London gates in the Knowledge, the body of wizardly information which the Whisperer held ready for routine reference: she had looked at the specs for the gates under normal circumstances. Being rooted in the Old Downside’s gates, the London “bundle” had similarities to them … but being a continent away and subject to much different spatial stresses, there were also significant differences. She would assess those more accurately when she was right down in the gating complex with their hosts.

Rhiow finished with the box, shook herself, and stepped out onto the terrace and then down onto the brick “stairway”, making her way down to the roof of the next building. There she made her way across the gravel again, this time to leap up on the Seventieth Street side of the roof’s parapet and balance there for a moment, breathing the predawn air. For once it was very quiet, no car alarms going off, even the traffic over on First muted, as yet. The low soft hhhhhhhhhh of the City all around her was there: the breathing of all the air-conditioning systems, the omni-directional soft sound of traffic. Only during a significant snowstorm did that low breathing hiss fade reluctantly to silence … and even then you imagined you heard it, though softer, as the breathing in and out of ten million pairs of lungs. It was the sound of life: it was what Rhiow worked for.